Infinite Fellowship Ministries

God’s Eternal Purpose – Part 9: Sermon By Apostle Gobanga

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 

Matthew 16: 13-19 (ESV)

Jesus was warning the disciples to be careful of the doctrine they received because wrong doctrine can divert you from the purpose of God. His apostles needed to understand that the only way they would abide as His followers was to capture the mystery of Christ. 

The mystery of Christ is spiritual and it is an internal revelation. It is not perceiving someone through the lens of time. This is contrary to the doctrine of the day that was taught by the Pharisees that corrupted mindsets and made one fall short of pursuing the sublime purposes of God.

Jesus is the summation and culmination of every prophecy in the Old Testament. He was more than a historical figure spoken about the prophets of old. He is a very present personality.

It is on the mystery of Christ that the Church (the people) is built. “On this rock” is in reference to the revelation that Peter has of Christ. That which the Father reveals to you about the Son becomes a mystery and by the Person of the Holy Spirit the church is built on this revelation.

God builds from within not from without because that which is within can withstand pressure from that which is without. The Church is built on that which is within not without and it refers to people not buildings or structures. 

God will build you on the mystery of Christ revealed to you. He discloses divine mysteries to you so you can personify and experience this mystery to become the representation of His Kingdom.

Divine mysteries are to induct us experientially into the things of God not to get us excited. God wants us to become the personification of the mysteries we have received so that we can be representations of Christ on earth. 

God is not building you based on the approval of men. Do not expect people to agree with everything that God has called you to. Seek the approval of God not men. 

God is calling you to walk by faith based on what He has revealed to you. That which is external doesn’t abide, but that which is internal causes shifts. That which is internal can withstand every kind of opposition without.

Whatsoever God has disclosed to you, you must believe it. Stand firm. That is the foundation that God wants to build you on.

We miss out on provision when we chase after it instead of chasing after revelation. God wants you to personify revelation. You are to be the personification of Christ so that all that God has spoken comes to pass. Don’t pursue provision. Pursue revelation.

God is taking us beyond our capacity so that He can be glorified. If we could do everything ourselves, then the glory would be ours not His. 

…And was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord… 

Romans 1:4 (ESV)

There was an ordination that took place for the purpose of time and space to validate Jesus and uphold the Word of God spoken about Him. As such, everyone who receives gets saved and gets eternal life. 

When Jesus is being referred to as the Son of God, it describes His Divinity. Jesus shares the same glory, majesty and power with God. John proved this in his gospel. He is God from eternity to eternity – He didn’t lose His divinity when He came to earth.

Jesus is the begotten Son of God whereas we are adopted sons of God. He has a relationship with the Father that is from everlasting to everlasting. 

For the Son of God to be referred to as the Christ means He is the executor of God’s eternal purpose based on the covenant of eternal redemption. Christ in the Jewish and Greek rendering means the ‘Anointed One’.

God only anoints they that have a purpose to fulfill. 

Because of the fall of man that God foresaw before it happened, God the Son after consulting the unwritten counsels of God offered Himself as the Lamb of God to atone for mankind. That is when Jesus was anointed as Christ. He is Christ because of this purpose and assignment. He was the first to be anointed to serve the purpose of God. Jesus set the precedence of anointing.

God wants the Church to come to a place where they embrace and accept His assignment before there is any manifestation. Jesus accepted His assignment before anything was created. God wants you to take up your assignment even before anything is made manifest. 

Jesus participated in creation with the Father. He understood Himself as the wisdom of God and the only One who has unlimited access to the counsel of God. 

If there are things that God is going to manifest in your life, you need to participate and partner with Him through prayer, obedience to His word and instruction. Don’t just wait for Him to do everything. 

For Jesus to be seated at the right hand of majesty, He needed to work with God. This is the only way He was going to be promoted in heaven.

When He speaks about your future, He is telling you that there are things He has locked up in you in eternity. He requires you to walk in faith and obedience for these things to be made manifest on earth. 

Jesus participated with Father in bringing about the redemption of man by clothing Himself in humanity. He learned obedience even in His suffering. 

God takes you through suffering to crucify the flesh. The greatest hindrance to you fulfilling your prophetic purpose is your flesh. There are things locked up in you so that will only overflow and break forth in suffering.

The outer man (flesh) is a type of the alabaster box. There is a glory that only comes with a Cross. There is a suffering you must endure in order for your character to be formed and for Christ in you to be made manifest in you. As God breaks your outer man (alabaster box), there is an incense that is released from your spirit man to give Him glory. 

Manifestation doesn’t happen unless there is a crisis. It is at this place where no one else but you carries the solution. Sons of God provide solutions for their generation and God manifests our sonship through crises. 

Jesus did not become the Christ until He was anointed. This was in eternity when He took up God’s plan to fulfill His purpose. He was manifested as Christ when He was baptized in the River Jordan.

Don’t wait to be manifested to see yourself as you are.

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles— if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, of which I became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His power.

To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ; to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him. Therefore I ask that you do not lose heart at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 3 (NKJV)

God planned to work Himself into His chosen people. He wanted to dispense of Himself to His people so God can become the life and providence of His people so that He can dwell with them and they will be one in Him as the Body of Christ. His people are to express nothing short of Christ.

As a Church, God wants us to express Him in Christ not outside Christ. 

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  

Genesis 1: 26-28 (ESV)

Why did He do so? He had an intention that one day He will enter and indwell man so that Him and man can be one. He desired that we may become the habitation of His indwelling presence. Such that the only thing we would carry as humanity is God’s presence. 

Pay the price to become a living sanctuary of God.

God desires that the Church becomes carriers of His presence. His presence is no longer in physical structures. He dwells in they that are one with Him. The physical sanctuaries we have as a Body of Christ are supposed to be replicas of our internal sanctuaries with God. 

There is a pattern that God wants us to have before we walk into manifestation of the same. Connect to the prototype of your persona. Let go of degenerate mindsets and patterns. God wants you to have a new mind and will so that what we manifest is not an afterthought.

Pray to cultivate your spirit man. You are your own sanctuary.

How does God fulfill His purpose? God has a plan to dispense Himself to the church so as to make His church, His children, His dwelling place and the Body of Christ. When the Son comes to indwell you, He does not come alone. He comes with the Father. The fullness of the Father is in the Son. The fullness of the Father and the Son is in the Holy Spirit. Learn from the Trinity.

The Church is to operate in the fullness of God. To be able to serve your purpose, you must attain to a certain dimension of the fullness of the Trinity.

God wants you to come to the place where you are not mesmerized when you hear a Rhema (spoken word) about the greatness in you. Embrace who you are in Him.

God wants us to understand that He has always had an intention to distribute Himself to humanity. That is the enterprise of God. God is sufficient in everything. We are the ones who need Him.

God does not dispense Himself except through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. He comes to dispense and distribute each and everything God is in Christ to you. The Holy Spirit comes to give you portions of God through Christ in you. This is the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

There are portions of God’s divine enterprise that have been dispensed to each and everyone of us. This is the mystery of Christ or the revelation you have received of Christ that is the fundamental foundation on which you are built.

This internal building serves to prepare you for the purpose of God for you. The devil fights to ensure that we don’t allow the Holy Spirit to inhabit us to curb this process.

God can only become a reality in you when He dwells in you. He wants us to understand that we are not ordinary. We are a chosen people, marked before hand, through Christ in eternity. God wants us to understand that when He indwells you, He becomes your provision.

God dispenses spiritual things not physical things. The business of getting physical things is your responsibility. 

Physical things are not found in eternity, they are found on earth. Earth was given to men during creation and it is by revelation that you identify and get your earthly inheritance. 

You need to understand who you are and that which is yours will find you and come to you. Understand that there are things that God will give you in the fullness of time. He will give you the ability and capacity to get physical things but this does not mean that you sit back and do nothing as you wait. 

Trust and believe God for the impossible.

Work should not be a struggle. It is meant to be an expression/manifestation of the dimension of Christ you carry. Use your education and/or career to sharpen the dimension of Christ you have.

In what ways can the infinite God dispense Himself into humanity? Neither the Father nor the Son can do so directly. 

God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen. 

1 Timothy 6:15b-16 (ESV)

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. 

John 1:14 (ESV)

The Father dwells in unapproachable light and Jesus as man could only interact with men not dwell in them because flesh cannot dwell in flesh. 

When Jesus rose from the dead, He was pneumatic i.e. spiritual. It then became possible for Him to indwell His followers. Through the Holy Spirit, the Trinity is now able to dwell in man. 

The Spirit of God is supposed to be our realization and experience of the Trinity.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. 

Acts 1:8 (ESV)

This is why Jesus was categorical to His apostles not to leave until they were filled with the Holy Spirit. It was the only way for them to experience not just the Holy Spirit but the Father and Son too. 

Any time the Holy Spirit is doing something in us, it is also Jesus and the Father at work in you. The persons of the Trinity are not separate entities. They are one, though distinct. The Trinity doesn’t operate in isolation. 

God the Father is embodied through the Son. The Son is the fullness of the Father. God the Father and God the Son are transmitted by the Holy Spirit in us.

Everything you need to know about the Trinity is experienced through the Holy Spirit.

The Trinity is applied in us when the Trinity indwells us. Jesus continues to work in the lives of believers through the Holy Spirit.

God came in human form. The essence of the triune God was in Him and through His death, He divided and distributed Himself in us.

That which is spiritual is unlimited. It interconnects with all facets of the supernatural. Spiritual things cannot all be mastered and embraced in one time or dimension. They are to be experienced throughout eternity. 

There are things that Jesus could not accomplish in the flesh. He needed to leave so as to distribute Himself and the Triune God.

For you to manifest who you are in the future, you need to embrace what God is saying about you today. You must accept who Christ is in you for Him to become your hope of glory. 

The first level of glory is the glory of your future. You are the hope of glory because Christ is in you. 

Glory is not something to be hidden – it is something to be made manifest. God wants to manifest Christ through you for the glory and honour of His name. 

It is up to us to take up the right posture and embrace the heart and mind of God for He is ready and willing to exceedingly abundantly do more than we could ask for or imagine.